Friday, June 24, 2005

Dolphin Dolphin

From the diary: “Friday April 19, 1985

“Bin redding a buck on dolphins called Dolphin Dolphin.”

The title is not evocative. Thinking, thinking. Nope, nothing.

Amazon.com has a listing for a book by this title, author Wade Doak. The description sounds sorta kinda familiar, sounds at least like the sort of book I’d read. “Doak [writes about experiences he] and his family had with Bottlenose Dolphins. … [H]e sold his house … bought a boat - and devoted his life to … Dolphins, founding the still-existing Project Interlock.“

Whales and dolphins have long fascinated me. Photos of dolphin brains show extremely sophisticated-looking blobs of matter, much like human brains. Photos of most other animal brains look relatively smooth; the convolutions of the brain surface in humans and dolphins seem to suggest these brains have a lot going on in them. And the bodies of whales and dolphins seem so beautifully designed, no extraneous parts, perfectly shaped for zipping (or plowing) through the sea. They are not fish but they don’t walk; they are suspended in a medium that reaches deeper than any we on the surface can access.